Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about people who break into empty subway trains and go for joy rides. We’ll also get details on a Nobel laureate’s decision to resign as a co-director of a neuroscience institute at Columbia University because he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
Shabazz Stuart’s reaction to the video that popped up in his Instagram feed was, “No, no, no, this must be A.I.”
But it wasn’t. The video had been shot from the cab of a subway train. It showed that train crashing into another — little more than a bump, from the look of it.
The person whose hands were on the controls did not appear to be a subway employee.
Stuart, who builds pod units for parking bicycles that could be installed at subway stations, said that he had heard about people who break into trains and drive them relatively short distances. He said he reposted the video of the collision this week after he saw a post on X about an incident involving a B train in the Bronx that was broken into over the weekend.
Transit officials say the culprits are thrill seekers who commandeer empty trains for joy rides. “Usually the overwhelming majority of the time, we’re talking about teenagers, early to midteens, who are enthusiasts and really fascinated with all things subway system,” said Michael Kemper, the chief security officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway. He said that often “we see the same faces and the same names” as in subway surfing episodes.
“What’s fueling it is social media and the attention they get, the clout that they seek, from doing these posts,” he said. “They generate lots of views. They communicate with each other and, more often than not, we see that they try to outdo each other.”
Some break into trains at night, but two incidents this month unfolded during the day. Shortly before 2 p.m. on Feb. 11, the police said, someone broke into an empty G train in the Church Avenue subway yard, a storage facility beneath the station of the same name in Brooklyn, and drove that train into another train. The police said on Wednesday that they had arrested a 14-year-old boy in connection with the incident.
And on Sunday, around 6:30 p.m. a social media post showed teenagers on a B train near the 174th-175th Street station in Bronx. The train was on a middle track, and they drove it roughly halfway to the next station. The police said they were investigating. Both incidents were reported earlier by The Daily News.
To deter would-be train operators, Kemper said, the M.T.A. is working to strengthen train cab doors, locks and windows. The agency is also installing additional video cameras at layup locations — where trains are parked when they are not in use, often on idle tracks between the tracks carrying trains with passengers — as well as “inside the trains and inside the cabs of the trains,” he said.
The M.T.A. already has motion detectors to trigger alarms, alert the rail control center and notify the police quickly. But the layup tracks are a particular concern because the only way to reach them is to tiptoe over live tracks, avoiding the third rail. “It’s dangerous for them, kids entering train yards,” Kemper said.
Stuart said he did not know who had originally posted the video of the commandeered train, which he reposted on X. It was made on a sunny day, probably not in the last month — no snow was visible on a building the train passes or on an elevated station in the distance or on the train it bumped into.
It might have been shot from a camera on a head strap that captured what the person whose hands were on the master controller, the lever that makes the train accelerate or brake to a stop, was seeing. It was not clear how fast the train was going or how many people were in the cab.
“All right, all right, take it easy, take it easy,” a voice says about 11 seconds into the 26-second video.
About seven seconds later, another voice says, “Yo, yo, yo” — followed a vulgarism after the collision. It was not clear from the video whether either train was damaged.
Weather
Expect a partly sunny day with a high around 36 and a chance of still more snow in the afternoon. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 27.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for snow removal.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“What we’ve seen over the last year is a complete destruction of the space between politics and the Department of Justice.” — Maurene Comey, who joined a Manhattan law firm. She had been a career federal prosecutor and had worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell until she was fired by the Trump administration last year.
The latest New York news
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Repair plans for a Bronx highway: As Gov. Kathy Hochul prepares to announce a plan for a $900 million overhaul to repair and expand the Cross Bronx Expressway, community advocates are opposing the project in favor of more limited fixes and improvements to local streets.
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M.T.A. threatens to sue Trump over frozen funds: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it would sue the Trump administration if it did not release more than $58 million in overdue funding for the Second Avenue subway expansion by next week.
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New social services chief: Erin Dalton, a public official who oversaw deep reforms in the social services department in the Pittsburgh area, was appointed head of the New York City Department of Social Services.
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How the mayor prepared for the second snowstorm: As the forecast rapidly worsened last weekend, Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged his staff to implement new policies and emphasized the need to communicate aggressively about the snow.
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No more $1 breakfasts: Malibu Diner, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, closed its doors after nearly 50 years, ending a unique breakfast program for older people.
A co-founder of Columbia’s brain institute resigns over his friendship with Epstein
“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment.” That was how Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and professor, began a statement announcing that he was resigning as a co-director of a neuroscience institute at Columbia University.
Axel has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. But the files released by the Justice Department show that he was a frequent guest at Epstein’s Manhattan home and that he also served as an intermediary on Epstein’s behalf with Columbia officials involved in admissions and philanthropy. Axel apologized in his statement for “compromising the trust of my friends, students and colleagues.”
“What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable,” the statement said.
Columbia said in a separate statement that with the “continued fallout from the release of the D.O.J. files,” it was appropriate for Axel to relinquish his position as a co-director of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. He will continue to conduct research and teach at the institute, the statement said.
Dr. Axel, 79, runs a major research lab at Columbia that employs more than a dozen researchers and assistants, and he has been a Columbia professor for 53 years. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 with Linda Buck. Axel also said that he had resigned as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious private biomedical research organizations.
METROPOLITAN diary
Grouchy angel
Dear Diary:
I was at a busy intersection in Midtown preoccupied by something I had just recently learned, when, thinking it was our turn to walk, I stepped into the street.
I was only spared from being hit by a taxi because an older woman with a surprisingly strong grip grabbed the back of my shirt and jerked me backward.
With the momentary high of a person who had just cheated death, I spun around with a grin on my face and began thanking her effusively.
She wasn’t impressed and began telling me off for being so careless and not paying attention.
We must have been a sight, me grinning and thanking her, and her scowling and yelling at me.
I promised I would be more careful in the future.
“What am I supposed to do,” she said, “follow you around everywhere?”
— Denise Linville
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post The Thrill Seekers Who Take Subway Trains for Joy Rides appeared first on New York Times.
